An Injury to Best Of The Rest Gives Silver Charm Clear Field

Best Of The Rest has suffered a knee injury, costing him a chance to run against Silver Charm in the $500,000 Donn Handicap at Gulfstream Park in Florida a week from today.

Best Of The Rest’s exclusion means that Silver Charm will face a probable field made up of Behrens, Frisk Me Now, Hanarsaan, Sir Bear and Unruled. There isn’t a Skip Away, Awesome Again or Gentlemen in this group, so Bob Baffert, who trains Silver Charm, can be excused for being realistic about his horse’s chances. “You never know,” Baffert said, “there could always be a horse out there who might be lurking in the darkness, but I can’t really see a horse out there who can run against Silver Charm.”

Baffert is talking about more than the mediocre Donn field. In citing horses that are not up to beating Silver Charm, he includes Real Quiet, another horse in his Santa Anita barn, who has been left with a tough encore after winning the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness last year. Mike Pegram, who owns Real Quiet, said last year that he would never run his colt against Silver Charm, mainly because of Pegram’s friendship with Bob and Beverly Lewis, who race Silver Charm. Pegram’s diplomacy aside, Baffert has the best reason to keep Real Quiet away from Silver Charm: Right now, Real Quiet isn’t good enough.

“If they ever met, it would have to be a long ways off,” Baffert said. “I’d never do that to Real Quiet. He’s got a ways to go, before he catches up.”

Real Quiet’s first 1999 start might be in the New Orleans Handicap at the Fair Grounds on March 7. If Victory Gallop also runs, the New Orleans track would have an attractive rematch of last year’s Triple Crown adversaries. It was Victory Gallop, after losing the Derby by half a length and the Preakness by 2 1/4 lengths, who beat Real Quiet by a nose in the Belmont, costing Pegram and Baffert the Triple Crown and a $5-million bonus for sweeping the series. Real Quiet didn’t run the rest of the year, while Victory Gallop didn’t win another race, finishing fourth in the Breeders’ Cup Classic in his last start.

Silver Charm, in his first start of the year, carried 125 pounds and came from almost nine lengths off the lead to win the San Pasqual Handicap at Santa Anita on Jan. 10. The way racing secretaries must baby the small list of box-office attractions, Silver Charm probably will pick up only one pound for the Donn.

But it’s still January, and Baffert can project his 5-year-old reaching the 130-pound mark if he runs in many more handicaps.

“The races [in the Fox network series] should all be weight for age,” Baffert said. “If you try to run in all [the handicaps], you’re looking at the weight thing, and that’s when horses get hurt, packing a lot of weight.”

Under traditional weight-for-age conditions, the ceiling is 126 pounds for older horses, with 3-year-olds carrying less.

Skip Away carried 130 and 131 pounds in races run under handicap conditions last year, winning his first seven starts, but he was badly beaten in his last two races.

“I think all that weight took its toll,” Baffert said. “When he carried 131 [in the Iselin Handicap at Monmouth Park], he just barely beat an allowance-type horse. Once horses start packing 130 pounds, they disappear right away. Silver Charm could carry 135 pounds, but I don’t want to take the chance [on an injury].”

The Donn is the first of 10 preps for the Pacific Classic at Del Mar on Aug. 29. Ten preps for a race seven months away? Well, yes, that’s what Fox and the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn. have wrought. There’s a $5-million bonus for sweeping five specific races, and millions more in bonuses determined by a complicated point system, but none of the preliminaries will mean anything unless a horse runs--and finishes at least fifth--at Del Mar.

More likely, the Donn will be Silver Charm’s prep for the $1-million Santa Anita Handicap on March 6, or the $5-million Dubai World Cup on March 28. It’s possible that Silver Charm could run in both races. “The horse will dictate what we do,” Baffert said. “If he’s not right, then he won’t show up.”

The Dubai race, which is not part of the Fox series, was worth $4 million when Silver Charm won it last year. Baffert has been saying for months that the Dubai purse was going to get a $1-million boost, and race officials in the Middle East made him a prophet a few days ago.

The $5-million purse makes the World Cup the world’s richest race. Last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic, augmented because the owners of Silver Charm, Skip Away and Gentlemen had to make their horses eligible by paying hefty supplemental fees, was ballyhooed as a $5.12-million race. But the Classic ended up paying out purses of just under $4.7 million.

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The Isaac Murphy Award has become the Russell Baze award. Since the Murphy award, named after the 19th century jockey who rode at a 44% winning clip and won the Kentucky Derby three times, was introduced in 1995, Northern California-based Baze has been its only winner.

Baze, 40, won the Murphy award for the fourth consecutive year by winning at a .276 rate in 1998. He scored with 404 of 1,465 mounts, extending his own record by winning 400 or more races for the seventh consecutive year.

Jockeys with a minimum of 500 mounts are eligible for the Murphy award. Jerry Bailey finished second with .252 and Edgar Prado was third with .239. Since 1995, Baze’s other annual winning percentages were .291, .283 and .283.

Horse Racing Notes

Alex Solis, who rode four winners at Santa Anita on Thursday, came back with three more. . . . Bob Baffert is having trouble finding an allowance race for Cavonnier. A race scheduled for Sunday was canceled when it didn’t draw enough entries. . . . Love That Jazz is the 2-1 morning-line favorite in today’s Santa Monica Handicap. Also in the field is Seeking The Pearl, who has earned $3.4 million, most of it in Japan. . . . Sunday’s $100,000 Santa Ynez Stakes, for 3-year-old fillies, drew a six-horse field, including Controlled and Rayelle.